1. Field of the Invention
An embodiment presented below relates to a communication apparatus and a communication method that perform communication through a power line.
2. Description of Related Art
A transmission system that uses a plurality of sub-carriers, including an OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) system and the like, has a significant advantage that provides quality communication even on a transmission line under an adverse condition. Thus, such transmission system is used not only in wireless communication, but also in wired communication, including power line communication and the like (e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication 2002-344417).
The wired communication using the above-described multi-carrier can also be applied to communication between AV (Audio Video) devices. For example, a television set and a DVD recorder transmit and receive an AV signal over the wired communication using the multi-carrier. The communication between the AV devices, however, is most likely stream communication between specific devices, and transmission volume is substantially high. When a device other than the AV devices is also connected to a wired communication network using the multi-carrier, the device is unable to use the network while the transmission is being performed between the AV devices, and thus the network is not used efficiently.